1. Technical Field
This invention relates to methods and apparatus for transmitting content data and a data recording and/or reproducing apparatus for preventing truant duplication of data, such as digital content.
2. Background Art
Up to now, it has been practiced to duplicate digital content, such as audio data, from a replay-only optical disc to a recordable magneto-optical disc, as the digital content remains in the state of digital signals. When connected over a dedicated cable to a reproducing device for an optical disc for duplicating digital content, the recording and/or reproducing apparatus of the magneto-optical disc updates the truant duplication inhibiting information, enabling the digital content to be duplicated only once, to recording inhibition, to supervise the copyright. Thus, the digital content, duplicated from an optical disc on a magneto-optical disc, cannot further be duplicated to the magneto-optical disc.
The digital content are exchanged between terminal devices, such as personal computers, over a network, such as Internet or LAN. In this case, the transmitting side terminal device uploads the digital content, along with an address of the receiving side terminal device, to a server device, while the receiving side terminal device downloads the digital content, addressed to itself, from the server device in which it is stored. In such exchange of digital content, interposed by the network, it is a frequent occurrence that the number of times of duplication of the digital content is not at all supervised.
The above-described system which exchanges digital content with the interposition of the network employs a general-purpose computer, without employing a dedicated recording and/or reproducing apparatus for a magneto-optical disc as in the case of a system designed for duplicating digital content from a replay-only optical disc to a recordable magneto-optical disc. It is therefore difficult to add the truant duplication preventative information to the digital content to be duplicated and to update the truant duplication preventative information on duplication to perform copyright management.